


Such Great Heights

by Radioheading



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean Winchester's denial game is strong, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, God is back, Grace Bond, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Profound Bond, Romance, Soul Bond, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 06:45:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6228046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radioheading/pseuds/Radioheading
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is changing, transforming. Cas is back, but there's more to the story than he's telling Dean.<br/>Takes place just after the apocalypse that wasn't. **Moving all my old work into one place, so if you feel like you've read this before, you probably have.**</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Dean hates the word 'suddenly.' It implies being taken by surprise, caught unaware because of some oversight, some factor not taken into account. And he's always prepared. Was always prepared. He's been hunting since...since the anticlimactic, short-circuited apocalypse, but nothing too big. Nothing he can't research and handle alone. He's sitting in some faceless diner, a barely-supported business that's open only because of the two-lane route connecting between major highways. The food is typical, comforting and awful for arteries, but Dean doesn't much care, though the salad in front of him would indicate otherwise. Every time he tries to eat a burger, to enjoy the perfection of his previous staple, he can see Castiel face-down, going at the raw meat like nothing else mattered. And if it's not that, it's Sam's puppy dog 'I'm-really-concerned-and-watching-out-for-your-health look, one that flashes in front of his eyes just long enough to make his brother's absence sting sharp and deep.

So when he's poking at wilted leaves, weighed down by ham and cheese and croutons ( _healthy,_ Dean snorts internally. _Yeah, Sammy. Real healthy._ ), trying to convince himself to open his mouth and just eat because he needs it, because he's getting too thin (ash taste everywhere, in his mouth, his nose, the air he breathes, food he eats, liquid he drinks. Sam must have it worse, though), his waitress decides to come back around, to refill his coffee and call him hon and look at him like she understands, like she _knows_ how he feels and wants to fix it. Fix him. The tired smile he tries to give her, the one that is false and contradicted by how loudly his eyes tell her to back off doesn't quite get the chance to tug at his lips, to twist at them with that boyish charm women eat up. But the soft glow that surrounds her, bathes her in a gold warmth locks words away. It's all he can do to nod when she asks him if his food is alright.

 _I don't remember doing any acid today._ A glance around reveals similarly lit patrons, people chewing and talking dutifully, unaware of the light that emanates from them. With wide eyes, Dean lays down enough cash to pay for his uneaten dinner and walks casually to the door, as if nothing's wrong. When no one follows him as he slips into his car, the seat hot from the sun, he remains there, hands wrapped around the wheel, knuckles going white. _Curse,_ he thinks. _Must have pissed some stupid witch off somewhere._

Delusion has never been the name of Dean Winchester's game, though, so when he tries to play this off, whatever _this_ is, as some skewed form of comeuppance, a lesson being taught to him, a nagging voice, a splinter in his thoughts speaks up, asks _who,_ exactly, would have done this. Because after the devil disappeared wearing his brother and Castiel left to put heaven to rights, his contact with the outside world has dwindled down to nonexistent. It's easy to drift away, to lose himself in simple hunts, to pass through, always a shadow, never a solid person. He can count the number of times he's spoken to anyone on one hand.

He's broken a promise, fled into the sunset, treading pavement to escape a nonexistent pursuer. He told Sam he'd go back to Lisa, live that nine to five life with a picket fence and a dog named spot and cookouts and parent-teacher conferences. But promises don't matter when the one he gave his word to is dead. Sam isn't thinking of him, isn't thinking of anything but the torture he's most surely enduring. Time isn't divided into days in hell. There are no markers, no way to know how much has passed. Everything is on a sick loop, a repeating pattern that patches up bruises and holes and tears, putting people back together so they can be slaughtered again. Dean knows Sam is hoping and praying and crying for rescue, for his big brother or an angel or _fuck,_ God himself to come down and rescue him. But that's not how things go because in this world; no good deed goes unpunished. Sam sacrificed himself for humanity, let the devil inside and then jumped into oblivion, looking into Dean's eyes the entire time.

And now he's gone, forever lost. So Dean continues on like everything's the same, like Sammy's back at school, just away, not here. Because if he thinks too long about it, if he remembers his own sentence in the pit, he usually finds himself on his knees, gasping while anger and despair and grief squeeze his lungs until they're bursting, forcing the air back out, refusing to let any in. Sleep comes in liver-frying handfuls, pills that could make a horse unsteady on its feet. But it keeps the dreams away, sends him so far down that he has to claw his way back, muscles unsteady and twitching. But it's worth it, the blank wasteland he gets, because then he doesn't have to see what he's done, what Sam's probably doing. It's easier this way.

He inventories, plays back each solo hunt. Vampires, werewolves, wendigoes—nothing that could curse him, even if somehow they'd managed to come back to life. But _something_ is very, very wrong in a way he's never encountered. People trickle in and out of the restaurant, each doing their very best firefly imitation, though they vary is brightness and some other way, maybe _tone._ He can't describe it, doesn't have the vocabulary to. Sam does. Sam, who he's trying to emulate. His brother collects information, sits back to gather fact before acting rashly.

His brother creeps up in quiet moments that become unexpectedly wrenching, a tightness in his head and chest when he turns his head in the car and expects to see Sam riding shotgun, when he goes to ask a question that Sam will know the answer to, when he wakes up in the middle of the night and can't fall asleep again without the rhythmic breathing of Sam's deep breaths. Dean's eyes burn and he tells himself it's the sun or maybe the stupid curse, that it's in his best interest to get out, away, before his sight goes completely. Dean is good at being alone, is almost a fortress, impenetrable, stoic, the model of the strong, silent type so popular in old movies. But where they were acting he is broken, silent because he can't share, can't use words anymore to explain _why_ he's the way he is. The best explanation, he thinks, might be those collective clips of war and genocide and children with wide mouths and silent screams, a jerky, thundering flood of _bad evil infected_ he keeps locked away, a Pandora's box where his heart used to be.

He drives, not a mile above the speed limit, focused only on getting back the hole that once might have been a relatively clean motel. The room is dark, dank, and not helped by the muted brown design scheme used to conceal any and all stains guests might leave behind. Dean's duffel rests on Sam's bed.

Sam's bed. Funny he still sees it as just that, not an empty bed, an extra mattress. Sam doesn't exist anymore, but he still has claim over things that do. But Dean doesn't think of it for too long because something else catches his attention, raises a red flag he can't ignore at the moment. On the other side of the room is a mirror, one he'd moved, placing it in a corner so the entire room could be seen, a way to keep from walking into a trap with his monster of the week. There's nothing waiting for him now, no hungry being with sharpened claws outstretched and expectant. What he sees, what catches him so off guard that he's left standing, mouth agape, hand still on the door is _himself._

He's glowing, too. Not like everyone else; there's barely a sheen on his skin, a faint phosphorescence like the reflected light of the moon. It's pale, white and sickly, and he can see that it comes from _inside._ He sits heavily on his the bed, holds his hands in front of his eyes and swallows hard because it's still there, obvious now with the room's curtains blocking the light of day. _Not normal,_ he thinks. _Not human._ He's shaking now, trembling because his mind is churning, busy spinning a thousand different scenarios, reasons for what's happening. His fingers don't help matters as he opens Sam's laptop and starts to search for something, anything, that could help explain what's happening. A few minutes later, though, all he finds is nonsense represented by every major religion. An _aura,_ they call it, the life force and energy of a person that hovers just above their skin. According to far too many hippie websites, the force is benign, a simple representation of the internal.

_Yeah, totally kosher. Too bad people don't just start to see things like this without supernatural help._

Because most everything says that enlightened beings can see this energy, people who let go of illusions, who rip the shrouds down to stare into the truth of the matter, who look at the world as it is. And that's not him. He's a realist, but he keeps his head down and doesn't confront the darkness within, chooses to keep moving instead, streaking ever forward, trying to outrun the past and all its repercussions. Which is what he's dealing with right now. A simple whammy he's been hit with, someone who was biding their time, waiting in the wings, making sure he wasn't killed before the world could be saved. That's it.

 

The bright computer screen in an otherwise dark room starts to make his head ache; resigned, he closes it, shoved it back into the case usually seen on Sam's shoulder. And there it is again, that sneaky reminder of his brother's imprisonment, of God's apathy. God. Even thinking the name makes him clench his fists, releases what feels like a geyser of magma into his bloodstream, hot and frustrated, angry at something he can't touch, can't hurt. And killing things isn't displacing the feeling anymore, isn't lessening the weight of Sam's useless death. Dean's life is long and painful, but reliving it is worse, looking back on moments, decisions, that could have changed the outcome of all of this, could have saved the people he loved. Instead, he dragged them into battle, watched them be hurt and killed and when the dust cleared and he was left alone, he could have laughed. Because, really, he's in hell too, alone, trapped by the fact that he can't save Sam, by the fact that he's poison. Everyone he wants to protect is hurt the worst by him. If he had just gone with Tessa the first time, if he'd just allowed her to take him to where he was supposed to go, then it wouldn't matter that he shares DNA with Cain and Abel, that he was a pawn in a bigger game.

But he's stupid and selfish, thought of himself as important, someone who couldn't give up the fight—not him, not then. And he was right. He was special.

_Fucked up, more like._

Shaking his head, he decides it's time to say goodbye to thinking, to allowing his thoughts to run wild, pulling back bits of guilt and regret he can't do anything to change, to fix. Three pills more than the suggested dose fall into his hand, are tossed back into his mouth and dry-swallowed, sticking to his tongue as they go down, leaving an acrid, bitter coating. But they work quickly, whispering to his muscles twenty minutes later, telling them to relax, to give in to the exhaustion, and it's sweet enough that he listens, allows himself to flow into sleep like a river feeding into the ocean. With his eyes closed, he can forget the day, the curse, can push it away until tomorrow, if it isn't gone by then. But he isn't given the chance—a hand clasps his shoulder, shaking insistently.

 

“Dean,” a voice says, just below normal volume. Normally, whatever came into his hotel room unannounced would be bleeding on the floor, but he's groggy, reflexes slowed with chemical compounds binding with blood, leaving him open, vulnerable. It takes almost a minute to clear his vision, and by then he knows he's not in danger, isn't going to be attacked. He recognizes the face, the strong chin, sharp cheekbones. The man's jaw is set, firm, and the look in his eyes is grave, though Dean's more preoccupied with the insanely bright halo of light around his head.

 _Not like the rest,_ he notes, still sluggish. Where everyone else looked like they glowed from the inside out, the man who still has his hand on Dean's arm looks like a spotlight has been placed around him, a crown of light. _God, this is weird._

“Dean,” the man says again. _No,_ he corrects. _Not man. Angel._ It's Castiel standing in front of him, looking down like the other shoe has dropped and he's trying his best to be understanding and patient. With a groan and thoughts of just rolling over and trying to disappear back into sleep, Dean leans back into the wilted pillows and looks at the angel for a moment, staring at the beacon in the dark.

“Fuck, Cas,” he says, expression mimicking the angel's grimace, “Is it ever good news?”


	2. Chapter 2

Dean's sarcasm is lost on Castiel, whose frown just creases deeper, forcing lines to appear between his brows, around his mouth. Dean would tell him he's going to get wrinkles if he keeps it up, but it's a lie. He'll always be the same, frozen in someone else's prime. Dean doesn't move, leaves his limbs still on the rough sheets, waiting. But the angel doesn't speak, and Dean's pill-addled eyes don't adjust to the dark well enough to see that Cas is moving in, dropping his head down close. It just looks like a blur of light, like speeding past a lamp post in the dark, but then the angel's _right there_ , lips millimeters away from Dean's forehead. Any movement will connect the two, will put skin to skin in a way that's not comfortable, not normal for Dean. But he's not sure why his mind goes there, why he even thinks of the possibility of Castiel breaching the space, of how lips could feel against him. The thought's brushed away when the angel inhales deeply, seemingly scenting Dean, searching for answers, looking to his body rather than his mind because it can't lie, can't cover up what Castiel wants to know.

“This isn't healthy,” Castiel says, and Dean stays as still as he can so they don't brush, so they remain two separate pieces, distinct and parallel, never touching. He wants to be alone because he _is_ alone and Castiel's company is just not Sam, just reminds him of the hole where his brother used to be. Anyone else is a joke, a cruel reminder, and he can't deal with it, just wants to fade out on his own, taken down in a hunt or maybe a car accident, something that will rob him of his life but assuage the black river inside of him, the deep waters that fill his lungs just enough to be pulled under, never fatal but enough to always feel on the verge of drowning.

“Does it matter, Castiel?” He asks, the angel's full name heavy on his lips. The nickname isn't relevant anymore, familiarity forgotten in the face of the truth. Why try? Why sugar coat, keep up appearances when it's obvious how he really feels?

“I didn't want this for you.” Castiel touches his hand, slides his smaller fingers around Dean's but doesn't back away, remains too close for comfort and suddenly ( _hate that word,_ his mind sighs, wistful) his heart is trying to beat out of his chest, trying to launch his blood clear across the room. He knows Castiel must feel it, must hear it. The light around the angel's head intensifies, burns white hot and with digits that forget their place, Dean reaches up, up, until they slide through the halo (only word that makes sense, does the strange hallucination justice). Jangling sparks of cool power tingle in there, in the tips of his fingers before traveling up his arm. Like electricity it completes the circuit, runs through his chest, his heart head eyes then legs, a flow that sharpens his sight, chases away the cloud of chemical sleep, brings him back to lucidity. Castiel looks clearer now, expression like a sigh, regret huddling in his eyes, swirling with the blue in a kind of permanent melancholy.

“It's what I wanted, remember?” His voice is as tight as his chest, pinched and lower than usual. “More of the same.” With stiff hands he pushes Castiel out of his proximity, out of the shared space. Dean doesn't want him there, doesn't want the angel's scent in his nose, the sharp-featured visage in his eyes. “And the same,” he sits up, leans against the wall before reaching over to the bedside table to shake a cigarette out from the pack that lays there, “has always sucked.” He lights the cancer stick, sucks it down deep and breathes it out of his nose, watching Castiel watching him. The embers of the cigarette are dark in comparison to the angel's far-reaching light, an insult to the purity found there. And it doesn't taste good, but the nicotine is enough to make him reel, a little rush that makes his hands shake.

“You're acting like a child,” Cas glares at the smoke. “You're wallowing.”

Dean hits Castiel before he's sure of what's happening, hears the snap of bones as his fingers crack against diamond-hard cheeks. And though pain tries to reason with him, tries to make him back down, he finds control hard to come by, can't remove himself from Castiel's body, can't keep from trying to make tangible the pain that hides, cowardly, inside him. The angel is covered with blood when Dean finally comes back to himself, though it isn't his.

“You look so human,” Dean says, not thinking of how he's practically straddling Castiel. He looks down at that war-painted face, the red of his own cells drying into impenetrable skin.

“I'm not.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“It's hard to forget.” _And difficult to remember,_ he thinks, because the man under him _is_ human, just happens to be hosting an angelic being at the moment. It's a trick, a farce without humor that the only person who might understand how it feels to be dicked around by heaven and its inhabitants is being possessed by one, an angel Dean thought maybe he used to know, used to get. He climbs off Castiel and sags into the side of the bed, shag carpet rough underneath him. He finds the cigarette, still lit, hanging off the side, _thisclose_ to becoming a fire hazard, and stamps it out in the ash tray, the classless fake crystal kind in every restaurant and motel that forgot that the 70s ended forty years ago.

His hands hurt, some cuts still open and trickling weakly, liquid snaking down toward the pale of his wrists. Then Castiel's reaches for him, fingers winding around the thin skin like a manacle but light, the weight of a feather falling. Dean wants to jerk away, to show how much the angel's touch isn't wanted, but it would be a tell, insight into how much his strange, uncomfortable presence gets to Dean. There's a buzzing under his skin and before he can tell Castiel, calmly, not to heal the damage, the cuts seal themselves, mending like punches had never been thrown, hadn't connected with marble skin. The angel's face tells a different tale, though, one of loss and slaughter. He wears Dean's DNA, the ricochets of anger and the absence of self-preservation.

“You didn't have to do that.” Dean's looking for more to be upset about, feels a twinge of regret over the loss of the physical pain, a welcome distraction from the endless spinning of his caged hamster mind.

“It's wrong to enjoy it like that.” Castiel doesn't move from the floor, but the sharp edge of his words comes across loud and clear.

“Huh,” Dean tilts his head, imitates the curious scientist look seen so many times on the angel's face. “You got a nice little upgrade, didn't you?” He taps his head, the soft spot at his temple. “Know what's going on inside here now?” Dean watches the angel's face crease, the muscles tensing and relaxing as he moves to speak.

“You might know,” Dean beats him there, voice loud, pointed. “But you'll never _understand_. So whatever you think you know, whatever you're doing here, it doesn't mean anything.” He would tell Castiel to get out, would pull him up force him to the door, but he's only human and isn't a match for the speed Castiel demonstrates, appearing next to him in an instant, laying a hand on Dean's face, covering his eyes. Dean would fight, would be reduced to an animal gnashing its teeth, kicking and struggling to get away from a captor, but he doesn't have the chance. He can't even swear properly before he's being pulled down into a darkness that floods his mind, a force that pushes the burden of wakefulness away, though he'd never admit it.

There's food in the room, the smell of morning, greasy home fries and strong coffee, a mix that hangs on clothes for hours to come. There's a spread set out, a simple Styrofoam container and to-go cup that's still steaming. Dean considers leaving it to go cold, but being passive aggressive has never been his style, and anyway, his stomach is churning, working itself inside out with hunger. The first bite of potato makes him bite his cheek to keep from groaning out loud; it's heaven, sweet onion and rich starch, like how his mom used to make. It's one of the few things he remembers easily, something that hasn't slipped away from him like the threads of a dream. He has trouble recalling her face sometimes, the dynamic expressions he'd experienced, not that of the frozen smile on the slip of torn photograph his father had carried in his wallet, the one he used to sneak looks at when he missed her more than words could express.

“Is it good?”

Dean isn't surprised to hear Castiel, though he didn't hear the usual wind-between-sheets sound of his entrance, was too entranced by his own memories. He nods without speaking, looks the angel in the eye and swallows hard because the light it _still there,_ hasn't worn off, hasn't faded. Castiel's looking at him strangely, lips pressed together, so Dean draws his gaze away from just over the angel's head and clears his throat.

“Don't do that again.”

“But I thought you might like break—”

“You're an angel, Cas,” the nickname rolls through his teeth, unnoticed, though Dean sees the slight widening of the angel's eyes at it. “Don't play dumb. It's a lie. Don't put me to sleep ever again, unless I ask you for it. Understood?”

“You needed rest,” Cas looks down at the table, hiding what was sure to be a poker face, anyway.

“Yeah, I did.” Dean stabs more potato, scoops some scrambled egg up with it as well. “But it's not fair for you to come in and snap your fingers and think that, even if what you're doing is trying to help, it's alright to take away my control.”

“But—”

“My choices are mine to make, Cas. No one else's. Not anymore. Not ever again.”

“I see.” Dean could swear the angel looks chastened, but quickly enough his expression rolls back to neutral and they fall silent, Cas staring at him as he eats. It's not a subtle or masked gaze, but an intense, almost curious examination—like he's an experiment and not a second of his life can be missed, overlooked.

“I get that societal norms aren't your thing,” Dean keeps his tone light, almost sarcastic, “But staring at people while they're eating? Sort of a no-no.” Cas nods, averts his eyes again and allows the silence to press in around them like insulation. He finishes soon enough, munching on the last piece of toast before washing it down with coffee strong enough to get up and walk away on its own.

“Why are you here, Cas?” Dean closes the container but doesn't look at the man next to him.

“You need help.”

“Like hell—”

“On hunts, Dean. A lot of demons are still running around, and while you might be the best, you can't do it alone.”

“So bring Sam back.” He says it even though he knows the answer, has heard it a thousand times and doesn't expect it to change.

“ _I_ can't,” Cas says, catching his eye, forcing Dean to stand straight, to look power and beauty in the face and remain impassive toward it. He's lost in the despair of the moment because no matter how much he tells himself that he can't help Sam's fate, it tears like a fresh stab wound when he's reminded of it, so much so that he doesn't think, doesn't catch the odd emphasis the angel uses.

“You need back up, Dean,” Cas is all soft now, has slipped the kid gloves on, is trying to coax Dean into seeing things his way. “And I might not be completely omniscient, but I'm close.” He smiles.

“Cas 2.0 got a sense of humor,” Dean notes, taking some pleasure in how quickly the angel's smile falters. “Fine. We're going to have to get in touch with Bobby first, though.”

“For?”

Dean touches the back of his neck, uncomfortable. “I—I think I've been cursed. I'm seeing light.”

“Light.”

“God, Cas, yes. Light. As in hippie auras surrounding bodies of people who seem pretty unaware of it. Yours is different, though.”

“Different?”

“Yeah, more like a halo. Stereotypical, huh? Do you have pretty white wings, too?” He's awarded with silence, which he takes as a victory. “We're gonna have to go and see him, I think. I research for shit, and maybe you two can figure this out so I can kill it.”

“Just like old times?”

“No,” Dean answers, without consideration. “Nothing's like it used to be.”

 *

They drive together. It surprises Dean; he figured Cas would disappear, would turn up at Bobby's when he arrived there, but no, he sits in the passenger's seat, stares out the window with Dean as the hours pass by, sun rising, stretching their shadows before calling it a day, fading out on the horizon. He eyes the rear view mirror, keeping tabs on the light glow he still has, the light he barely notices, though the darkness highlights it, allows Dean to see his hands curled clearly around the cracking leather of the car. He's got a headache, one that's lasted all day but is upping the ante now that he has to strain to see in the dark. Cas knows, has been sending him concerned looks that Dean catches in the corners of his squinted eyes, though he ignores them and the angel lets it go, makes no move to try and help. His luck is good—the road is empty of any traffic, headlights that could blind him, make the sharpening pounding turn shrill.

“Dean,” Cas' voice is low, but its gruff timbre is a sharp break to the silence that has come to be the third passenger in the car and it sets Dean's teeth on edge, the sudden spike of noise enough to make him wince. He wants to tell Cas to shut up, to not say another word but he knows it will just hurt worse, make it feel like he's coming apart at the seams. The road in front of him starts to wave, obnoxious yellow curling into black and Dean decides it's probably best to pull over while he can. As soon as his girl's tires move from the asphalt he cuts the engine and leans over his arms on the steering wheel.

“Should I drive, Dean?” Cas asks, barely louder than a whisper. “I know how to.”

 _Yeah, but you don't care about my car._ The thought distracts Dean from the cloying heat that throbs behind his eyes now, making his sight shimmer in and out, patches of black coming in at the edges. _And I'd prefer to keep her in one piece._

Cas is speaking again, he can tell, but it makes no difference to Dean because whatever's in his head flares, fans out inside and suddenly he's gasping for air that his body doesn't know what to do with anyway. He breathes in, in, in, forgetting to exhale. He opens his eyes though it feels like each vein is imploding under the pressure, gapes at Cas and mouths 'please,' but the angel's touch, when it comes in a circular motion on his arm, does nothing.

Just before he slips away, though, he notices that he can't see his hands anymore. That it's dark, so, so, dark and Cas is whispering to him the way his mother would after a bad dream, though the wording's a bit different.

“You'll get through this,” Cas is saying. “You'll make it through.”


	3. Chapter 3

The world sharpens the way it faded—into darkness. Dean knows where he is in an instant by the smell, weathered leather and tobacco that still persists, carried by the cloth of the carpet. He's folded into the Impala's backseat, legs bent back, on his stomach, one arm asleep under him. The other hand's down over the seat, resting lightly on carved initials, the four letters that turn the Impala into a time capsule, a reminder of the past and how life used to be. He groans along with aching muscles as he picks himself up, being careful not to hit his head on the roof of the empty car. Cas is gone and the engine is off, keys still in the ignition.

Dean's shaky, steps unsure. Though there isn't any lingering pain, his body braces itself, waiting for its return, for the peace of its cessation to be broken. He leans on the door as it closes behind him, sliding down the metal until he hits the cool ground underfoot. He scrubs at his eyes, digs the heel of his hands in and massages hard until colorful spots roll through, hazy like the electric snow of a television with no reception. It's quiet, eerily so, the usual nighttime sounds of cicadas, the wind moving through grass and mountains all but nonexistent. Dean doesn't like it, doesn't trust it—it means there's something out there, a _reason_ to be quiet, to go unnoticed. He should be worried, on the offensive or at least alert, but the energy's been sapped from his body, limbs feeling more like limp spaghetti than flesh and blood, sinew and power. There's no force in him to be reckoned with.

“Cas?” he asks the dark, though it doesn't travel far. His throat feels like it did that summer when he'd saved Sam from drowning, had thrashed and fought choppy water and a riptide that dragged his brother so far out he became a black fleck on the surface. By the time he'd gotten Sam back to the beach, the salted liquid has started to weigh him down, breaching his lungs, filling him until sand was under his knees and he could gasp and choke and cough it out. But Sam had been safe, had drawn breath and color back in, aided by a thundering heart. Dean had felt his, too, had tasted its blood in his mouth because that was their connection, the mindset handed down by their father: _he goes, I go—he dies, I follow and force him back._

But there isn't any water in Dean's throat now, no tide to sweep him away from the inky darkness pooling in his eyes. He tries again.

“Cas!” This time, there's an echo, wavelengths dispersing like a ripple in water. But it comes at a price, a sharp grating in his throat that makes him want to whimper, though he holds the sound in.

Then, there—a light in the distance, one that takes Dean back to steamed windows and irritated tapping, the cocky swagger of policemen who called him 'son' and layered superiority in their voices. Great. Just what he needs, a cop to come by, to think he's drunk or driving recklessly. But the beam of light, small enough to be a flashlight at first expands, stretches out as it approaches until he's having trouble keeping his eyes wide and looking because the intensity of it is like staring at the sun on a summer day, the high pitch of power against clear blue. Dean knows he should be scared, but the being or thing has an infectious presence of calm like a bath he sinks into, warmth closing around his head as he submerges willingly.

Dean's silent companion stops about a foot away from him, allowing for a better look. It stills, like it knows he's trying to figure something out, trying to piece a puzzle together. But he runs through the monsters and demons and long-legged beasties cataloged in his mind and finds nothing. He takes it in, wispy, mist-like light that still allows the impression of features and a body, long lines for the arms and legs, tapered fingers, an angular jaw and a jolt of blue that implies eyes, and as he looks at them they clear a bit or he fills in the gaps, stares into pure _color_ , impenetrable almost-human irises, the likes of which he's never seen before but somehow knows so well. It's not possible, he doesn't even know how he can tell, but there's recognition in those eyes, along with a convoluted tangle of nostalgia and hope and guilt, all of which he senses easily, a unconscious knowledge as natural as the blood running through his veins.

“Who are you?” He grunts, low.

 _You know who I am,_ the shape says, and Dean hears him but it's not normal, not right because it's said out loud but it shakes inside him, too, sounds like the smell before a first winter snow and tastes like the wistful sigh of a goodbye, the last second of an embrace before both leg go and head separate ways.

“How—why,” Dean tries to make sense, tries to organize his thoughts into actual questions but the more he chases, the farther they pull back. He's entranced by what's in front of him, unable to do anything but keep staring because he's strangely afraid it will disappear, that it will take the _warm right home_ he feels away with it and leave him empty again.

“Cas,” He manages, the name tripping over his teeth to stutter out. The angel nods, or at least the light around his head burns brighter and bobs a bit. Dean takes it as a yes.

 _I didn't think it would happen this soon,_ Cas laments, sadness stretching his words tight. It amplifies in Dean, splashes him with the cold lucidity of loss and a full-body ache, the kind that comes right before tears.

“What are you doing to me?” He gasps, falling to the side, skinning his hand on the unforgiving rocks there. It doesn't hurt, though, can't touch or compare to what's happening on the inside.

 _Empathy._ The light folds in on itself, shortens in length. Cas is kneeling, getting down to Dean's level. _You'll learn to control it._

“Control it? What—” It's so hard to think, to add up what's amounting to a revelation, an understanding of what's happening. It's _there,_ he knows it is but he's being attacked on all sides with emotion and images and beauty that's trying to stop his heart, makes it flutter and gasp every time he blinks and sees the angel again. So he closes his eyes, blocks sight out completely and a thread of evidence finds its way to him, suspicion at the fact that Cas isn't reacting to his new ability to see the angel's true form.

“You know what's happening?” He uses his hands to try and black out the light—it's begging to be let back in and his body yearns for it too, wants to reach and touch and let Cas filter through him like the sun streaming through water, refracting under to warm under the surface.

_I wanted more time for you to adjust, but it started so quickly..._

“Cas,” he lifts his lashes, bites his lip until his teeth are painted red. He has to stay focused, needs to stay sharp but the angel is disarming, digs at his defenses until he can feel them crumbling, turning to rubble. “Cas,” he sighs, drawn in again, hands clenching, itching to reach out.

“No,” he spits. “No.” He grips one of the rocks under his hand, presses the jagged side into the flesh there and uses the pain, the anger to keep his head clear. “What's happening, Cas?”

 _I—I can't._ Without any explanation, Dean understands that Cas can't bring himself to say what's going on, can't put into words what's been set in motion. He doesn't want it to be true. But it is, and an explanation begins to form with an influx of images, all of Dean himself. The first could be him looking into a mirror; he's shown as he is now, though the light surrounding him is as bright as he'd seen in the diner that first day, brighter, even, a shock of white that whispers of passion and loyalty and a fierce sense of _good,_ even if his eyes look troubled, have bruises blooming along the edges, making the green stand out that much more. Like the sped-up clips of flowers opening, turning their faces to the sun before dying, days rising and setting, the image shifts, begins to change. The light cools to a butterscotch gold, the color of candles on faces in the dark, before waning completely, fading and pulling inward before it dies and leaves him blank, drab, part of the background. And then—then something shifts, a sharp before/after that casts what at first looks like a shadow around his hair (hair that looks brighter, lighter than his dishwater blonde) before it grows and spreads, imitates what he'd seen around Cas' head.

When his body loses its clarity, when the sharpness of his tangible self flows together and his eyes burn like they're lit from behind, Dean understands. When the picture in his head shows someone that used to be human turning into something like Cas, he sees. And then the image disappears, releasing Dean's mind enough so that his surroundings come back into startling focus. There's a hand on his shoulder, digits that are solid and human, or close enough, and tell him that Cas has retreated back into James' body, curling up inside flesh and bone to offer comfort, to keep from reminding Dean of what's happening, what he's _becoming._

“Get off me,” a voice that sounds like his own says. He's not sure if he's speaking or thinking—everything sounds dead, anyway, and though he would like to be angry, he can't muster it.

“I didn't want this, Dean.” Cas is telling the truth, but it doesn't matter. Nothing does. His life isn't his anymore, if it ever was. Is he even alive now? “God is back, gave me this mission,” Dean stares out, away, trying to see if he can differentiate the mountains from the sky. “Please look at me,” Cas continues, and Dean does, because what else is there to do?

“He said this was the best thing he could do for you. That me being here with you was the best he could do for me. I'm here to help you Dean.” Cas keeps talking, tone pleading, begging, and Dean wants to know why he's so goddamn important, why the CEOs upstairs have to keep fucking with _his_ life. Is it a game? Is he just a chess piece on someone's board?

“Through the transition,” Cas finishes, and Dean looks down at his hands.

“Not glowing,” he whispers, conversationally.

“Your soul is gone,” Cas says, and he looks down too, keeps his eyes away from Dean's.

“I lost my soul?” He's laughing in the dark, great, echoing, breathless peals that spread out into the distance. His throat doesn't hurt anymore.

“It's being replaced,” Cas' hand is still on Dean, who shakes his shoulder, mind wondering for a moment what it will feel like when he has wings and does that. “You're gaining Grace as we speak.”

With Cas' hand gone, nothing holds him down. Dean pushes himself up, doesn't say anything before climbing into the car, sitting for a moment, static, eyes wide, staring at nothing. And then, like a thousand times before, he turns the key, fires the engine and the car purrs under him, waiting for the press of gas, a decision of direction. The turn he takes, adjusting the wheel sharply, makes the tires squeal against the road. He leaves Cas without looking back, without thinking twice.

It's a few hours later, eight more before he reaches Bobby's, that he needs to stop for gas and coffee and, if convenience stores carried it, a Vicodin or twelve. He steps out into dewy pre-dawn air and crosses the threshold into the sickly phosphorescent-lit store, heading to the corner that has about eighteen containers of superfluous coffee flavors. Last time he checked, beans didn't naturally come tasting like blueberry. He smiles at the older, heavyset attendant, who beams at him. He turns, reaches for a cup and starts to fill it when a wave of embarrassment rolls through him, buffered by guilt and shame and a hot fleck of lust that curls in his stomach, reaching to pull blood downward.

 _The fuck?_ None of it, not one thing he just felt is his, comes from him. Someone else, a guy with a broken-in baseball hat and the light tang of sweat that comes from long hours behind a wheel brushes by and now Dean's fighting guilt and homesickness and a hole in the pit of his stomach for a kid he doesn't have.

With a hiss and a sharp sting in his fingers, Dean's broken out of the trance of emotion. He's overfilled the cup, burnt fingers that are already turning shiny pink. _Shit._ He caps the coffee, tosses a fiver to the attendant with a tight smile and all but runs from the store, not stopping to breathe until he's back in the safety of his car, protected from the instability of strangers and their freewheeling emotions. _Go,_ his mind orders. _Just drive._ He checks his rear view, means to look for other cars, but doesn't get that far because he's too busy gaping at the ring of emerging gold framing his head, a sunrise around the gravity of his own person. He tries to touch it out of instinct, only remembers the burn on his hand as it's colliding with his head, but when the pain doesn't come, when he his fingers, upon closer inspection, aren't swollen or throbbing but normal and whole, skin unmarked, he breaks.

In his car, in the middle of some nowhere town, all alone, Dean puts his face to the wheel and screams as loudly as he can for the loss of his humanity.


	4. Chapter 4

When the door to Bobby's house opens and Dean is welcomed in, he can't help but relax in the quiet happiness and spurt of love that drifts over him. Bobby's feelings are straight forward and clear; he doesn't lie to himself or anyone else (except, maybe, about having kissed a certain demon) and that is something Dean can appreciate now, especially after Castiel's clear-as-concrete explanation. Bobby's smiling, Dean's unexpected visit a happy surprise, but concern twists at the older hunter's joy, though it's not bad, not negative, feels like a cold drink after a day in the sun because it's a form of caring, one of the ways humans with no genetic relationship tie themselves together.

“You look tired,” Bobby notes, salt-and-pepper eyebrows forming a line that pulls down, shading his eyes. Dean pauses for a moment to look his friend over as well, takes in the bright wash of lemon yellow light huddling close to his body. It has will to it, an protective edge and a need to see justice done. But Dean doesn't need to look into Bobby's soul to know that; he would have been sure of it, even looking with weak human eyes.

“I just need to sleep,” Dean says, wavering under the intensity of the hunter's unconscious emotional weight. Dean's invading his privacy, can sense what most are glad to keep secret. It's not right. “I need a break.” He pieces inflection together in an almost passable imitation of what he used to sound like.

“Ok,” Bobby says, pretending not to notice the unease Dean's sure must be rolling off his skin in thick waves, making the air slick, heavy like the grey before a storm. He does well, tells Dean to go up to the room he always sleeps in when he visits, keeps it light, though his eyes stay on Dean a beat too long, squint a bit too hard. With a smile, he turns, gets a clap on the back and goes down a familiar hall to a room he's known since he was a child. It's a bare room, a bed and a dresser and threadbare curtains on windows that stick because they aren't opened often, but it's also a sanctuary, a place that felt solid against the transitory backdrop of so many motels. He slides off his leather jacket, frowns at it when he sees the thin coat of dust from leaning on the car, then in the dirt. His mind starts to loop back to Castiel and everything that had been let out into the open, but he shorts the impulse out, allows a cold roadblock to fall into place, to forget everything. Until it starts to get noticeable, until he isn't Dean anymore, he's content with lying to himself, pretending that one of the only people he used to trust is just screwing with him. So he hangs the dirty jacket on the door handle, slips off his shoes and collapses onto the soft plaid of the bed's comforter. It isn't long before he's letting go.

In Dean's dream, he's sitting on a bench suspended over the ocean. He isn't worried, doesn't mind the height because he knows he's not awake, knows this is just a fanciful creation, though it isn't his. No, usually when he knows he's dreaming, it's because someone else is in control, want to talk or tempt or torture him. So he waits with the sun on his face, the salt-mist air of the water below in his lungs. It's nice, the quiet rolling of the tide. It passes like time and the cycles of the moon, a reminder of movement forward, of continuance. The exact opposite of what he's been doing, having bogged himself down in stagnation, the slow twist of quicksand that just snares him in deeper when he makes a move to escape.

 _Heavy-handed symbolism_. His internal voice rolls its eyes at the dry sense of humor whatever's brought him here seems to have.

“Well,” a reedy voice murmurs from behind him, “I wanted to make a point. You are stubborn, Dean. Sometimes it's hard to make you see anything but that which you want.” Dean cranes his neck, looks up at a man who seems to be about his own age, hair slicked back into a low ponytail, dressed in jeans and a jacket that looks like typical construction-worker garb. He is nothing special at first, brown hair and eyes, symmetrical features. But there's a kindness there, a love that's somehow directed at him in the most platonic and complete way—there's nothing else like it, admiration and pride and a little regret, all for him.

“You can't be—” It doesn't make any sense, can't be possible.

“And yet, I am.” The man walks around the bench, comfortable on a surface that isn't there; Dean's eyes widen and track his feet, clad in tattered Converse.

“And here I expected sandals,” he drawls, the sense of wonder gone, replaced by the vendetta he'd promised to keep as Sam had descended into a hole in the ground.

“I would think you'd learned never to expect anything,” the man sits, tone still amiable, eyes still soft. “Which is why I'm giving you something.”

“You can screw yourself if you think _this—_ ” he motions at himself, at the changes taking place on a microscopic level, “is what I want. Give me Sammy. Kill me, take anything. But let him live.”

“What do you think I'm doing, Dean?” The man remains placid, crosses his legs and just stares at Dean, who knows that every sin, every thought and action and urge and _need_ is open and available, like words on a page.

“I don't know,” he admits. He doesn't want to talk, doesn't want to give the man—oh, god ( _ha),_ he can't even think the name, any satisfaction, not after he'd pulled Dean's family apart, shattering it and sending the sharp shards into the world, each piece raw, broken. Of course, his mouth forgets itself and starts to spew what's built up inside, a fast-flowing river that lays bare his past few months.

“I can't breathe,” even now his chest tightens, constricts his voice. “There's not enough air without Sam, knowing he's down there going through what I already have. I—I just can't let him go through this, can't—” he's cracking, tears building up to stream down, pleading with God, trying to get him to see what's happening. “And now I'm losing myself, don't you see? I have nothing left, not even life.”

“We all make mistakes,” God pulls at the hair kept back by an elastic. “Even me. Especially me. But you boys did something, reminded me of things I'd forgotten about the human race.”

Dean sniffs, wipes his cheeks. “What, that we have balls?”

God laughs. Dean's made God laugh. “That, however large your capacity for destruction, and anger, and hate, you are also fiercely inclined to love. To protect the people who mean something to you. Even if they're not blood. Even if they're strange, or not even human.” He tilts his chin at Dean with the last remark, leveling a look at him that twists Dean's stomach with something hot, an impulse he quickly sidesteps. 

“So why are you punishing Sam?”

“I'm not. _I_ can't get him out because he went willingly. I pulled you out because, technically, a demon dragged you down.”

“You can't get him out...” But Dean's starting to put it together, knows he's on the right track when he sees a spark in those dark eyes, a figurative pat on the back, sending him in the right direction.

“And neither can you, as a human. They don't last long in the pit.”

And there it is.

“I'm changing,” Dean hands clench unconsciously as the truth dawns on him. “So I can save Sam?”

“And they say your brother's the smart one,” God chides, smile revealing slightly crooked teeth. Dean knows that the image of the man in front of him is just an illusion, a way to make it possible for his human schema to deal with a deity, but the imperfections God has chosen reveal a being uninterested in impressing anyone. “Cas would have explained this, had you stuck around, you know.” But there's no anger in the words—they're teasing, light with laughter. “That stubbornness again.”

“You made me like this,” Dean shoots back.

“No, Dean.” God shakes his head. “I make life, then let it go, let it choose its own direction. You are who you are, and it's my job to love you for it.”

“You're not like I thought you would be.” Dean's surprise makes him blunt, or more so, but he can't sugar-coat, can't really think far ahead enough to do so. God's hand moves over his, clasps and cradles, opens a channel that fills Dean to the brim, reflections of horror and pain and the burden of responsibility. It's a rattle in his eardrums, chalk squeaking on a blackboard, fingernails ripped from their beds. It's genocide and war and murder and prejudice all carried out for one name, for one God who just wants peace for people who seem to achieve anything but.

“Mistakes, Dean. We have to move on.” The images shift, a patchwork of _real,_ gasps of pleasure under stars as bright as streetlights, breath carried on winter air, a first kiss, first broken heart, car crashes and laughter and invisible connections that people forge to keep from feeling so alone. It's good and bad and nowhere near perfect but that's what life is and anything else would be false, wouldn't be anything at all.

“Oh,” Dean gasps when it all stops, when he's in the arms of someone he'd never believed in and then hated wholly, had wanted to persecute for all that had been inflicted upon him and his family because of their connection to his own son. God is warm and his embrace feels right, that first sip of something hot as the cold rolls in.

“You understand,” God's in his ear and the question isn't a question because he knows Dean _does,_ that he finally gets it. He's never been a pawn, a jerked-around cog in someone's machine. He was just the only one who could do it, who would hold onto his brother until the end, past the point where others would give in, would fall to their knees and just let the apocalypse come. He doesn't think it's true, can't paint himself the hero that others might. He's just a man. Was just a man. But that's what God thinks, and for once, he's not going to fight it.

“Cas will take care of you, will lead you,” God explains, and Dean smothers a grin at the fact that he coined the nickname that God himself is now using. “Do right by him, Dean. I'm only doing what's best for him, too.”

Dean would ask what that means, would try to pry more information out of God, but lips on his forehead stop the flow of words and then the ocean and sky and bench disappear, fade into white and he's opening his eyes to a sunrise that's snaking past the old curtains, cutting a boxy pool of light on the floor. Dean doesn't need to look behind him to know that he's not alone in the bed his cheek is pressed against. Tendrils of familiar grace brush against him, light as a flake of snow melting into skin. Where a soul was kept static, the beginnings of his own grace react and reach out, teasing and sliding through the curious rays of Castiel's more solid essence. Dean's floating on the warmth of security and the rapid heart race of something else, something that's been in him somewhere, dormant, but is waking up and asserting itself now and not taking no for an answer.

“Cas,” Dean sighs, and though it's just a word, just a name, it means so much more, is a confession of fear and longing and confusion. It's human fear and angelic hope and confidence, a messy mix of jagged edges that can't quite be smoothed.

“I'm sorry,” Cas says, close, and then there's a cheek pressed to Dean's, a touch that feels right because somehow he knows that this is a celestial being thing, a kind of comfort that's personal and deep and instinctive because it reaches further than humans can go, pressed two against one another until, for a split second, they're one. Sex doesn't touch this, doesn't come close to the release Dean feels as the angel presses closer with his body and grace, wraps solid arms and invisible (for now) power around him. His response is to pull away, to fold in on himself but he can't, doesn't quite remember how to shut down, to push the closeness back. Humans are built for privacy—single minds and bodies and experiences; angels are made to share, to unite in being.

But that knowledge doesn't help, really, when Dean happens to glance down at himself and sees that he's not entirely there anymore, that he's blurring around the edges, if only slightly. He chokes and a sob or something like it tumbles out, shock jolting him so strongly he flinches in the angel's arms. Dean feels Cas' anxiety at his fear, so what happens next is natural in that it's the first and only thing the angel thinks of (that he's aware of Cas' mind, that it's now open and welcome to him is overlooked, for the moment) and it's no sooner thought than done. Lips lock on Dean's, awkward and stiff at first, then a flowing sense of right ripples down his spine and he relaxes, opens his mouth a little so Cas can kiss every part of his mouth, a slow exploration that he reciprocates, sliding his tongue into the angel's mouth, sparking every part of their exchange with electricity, quiet excitement at the discovery of one another, of a perfect fit almost lost. The best place to hide something is in obvious view.

Cas is unexpected, gives all he can and takes the lead, letting his hands explore Dean's body, hard muscle and sinew and then further, uses his grace to feel the pale untouched places Dean's never shown anyone, dreams and ideas and thoughts locked away when he realized his role in life was to save everyone else. It unleashes an earthquake of sorts, a collapse of the last personal barrier Dean has. And then it's gone and he's shaking because there's no going back, no hiding from the transformation that's rooted deeply now, is unstoppable. But Cas just hold him, just keeps telling Dean _I'm here, I'm here, I'm here,_ and then he's being lifted, supported by Cas' grace as it turns into a nova, brighter than anything in creation and it's focused only on _him,_ on wrapping around the last gasp of the fight left in his human body. He's shielded, then shining from the inside out, erupting with potential that's been realized and unleashed, an erupting force that stretches him, extends his being until _he's_ wrapping himself around Cas, pushing forward, breaking through.

He's not alone in his mind in the moments before the change takes, completes. And though it's by far the most frightening thing he's ever experienced, he'll remember it as the best thing, the most pure thing he's ever known.


	5. Chapter 5

Dean remembers everything when he comes back to himself, though he's not quite sure how much time has passed. He's not alone, though, is still intertwined like a lanyard braided and forgotten, pieces molding to their counterparts, adjusting, never to go back as they were before.  
  
   _Dean?_  
  
    Dean hums, a sleepy 'mmm,' feels like he's in a sort of limbo, in between dreams and day. But angels don't dream, have no need to create frivolous fantasies, latent desires and yearning for things they can't admit. They don't hide anything, have no reason to doubt what they feel, what they're told. But, somehow, Dean hasn't changed in that way, is still himself in every way except he's lighter, can't dive into the darkness inside because it's not quite there, can't be accessed anymore.  
  
    “Cas.” Wonder bubbles up, spills over and he's a little kid again, staring wide-eyed at simple things that look like miracles to naïve eyes. He sees every angle of the room in startling clarity, down to striations in the wood floor, the slight wear in certain areas from years of walking the same path. He breathes in, tastes stale air and the mixed scent he (woods and calm) and Cas (lemongrass and the ocean just before dawn) make together. In time with the single syllable that falls from his lips in tones above human comprehension, tones that make Dean picture the  sticky juice of fruit being licked off fingers, something else sounds, a sharp clatter-crack of glass as it jumps from the windowsill in pieces, blown inside and out onto grass and carpet.  
  
    As quickly as Dean and Cas flowed together into one, Dean wrenches away, landing on the bed, a solid man again, limbs heavy, unnaturally so, like this, the body he's lived in for thirty-one years is wrong, a prison to conceal his true nature. He doesn't fit in it anymore, wears it like a suit a size too tight.  
  
    The door opens, Bobby bursting in, soul tucked in close and pale, barely a centimeter above his skin, jaw set for a fight. Wild eyes calm when he sets his sights on Dean, but then the older man sees the panic and fear on Dean's face, expressions he doesn't think to cover up yet because he only knows how to be a person, still reacts as if he's a spinning time bomb like the rest of humanity, streaking this way and that, living and hurting and forging through the dark because there isn't anything else to do.   
  
    “Dean?” Bobby's back is hunched and he takes small steps, hands up like Dean's a wild animal, pacing and throwing himself at the bars of his cage just waiting for the right moment to strike. But when Bobby asks if he's alright in his most neutral tones, Dean claps a hand over his mouth and shakes his head, looks to Castiel for guidance. His unnoticed presence makes the older hunter jump, muscles contracting together, dumping a fight response,  _attack, protect_ into his blood. Dean senses it, Bobby's immediate reaction to the slightest threat toward his safety. It twists like a knife, knowing that Bobby's the one in danger, that one slip from Dean could rob his sight or hearing or both in one fell, burning swoop. Dean widens his eyes at Bobby as he approaches faster, shakes his head no, please no.   
  
    “Bobby,” Cas crosses the room but Dean sees it as a normal pace. His stomach drops to his feet when he thinks of how he can do that now, too. “If we sit down together and I help explain what's happening, will you listen?”  
  
    The hunter's eyes tick back and forth, always moving, jumping, weighing options, trying to figure out if this isn't some sort of elaborate trap. Dean takes his hand away, mouths _please, please Bobby,_ and holds his hands out, beckoning. He needs the closeness in a way he's never experienced, an acute ache that pulls at his scalp, makes his skin itch. Bobby listens, ignores Cas to go to Dean, to sit with him and look closer.  
  
    “Dean,” his face goes slack as he stares into Dean's, brings fingers up without asking permission  and strokes along his jaw, one that feels sharper, carved from ivory for a mask, the blank commonality of all angels. Except this one. “Jesus, Dean.” Bobby has gone cold inside, organs shriveling with the idea that his last bit of family, the only other person he has on this planet, is now something other, something to be hunted. Dean isn't trying to read his thoughts, doesn't want that bottom-dropping-out free fall that the older man is currently experiencing but he can't turn it off, can't surrender and shut the world out. He doesn't have a choice in the matter anymore. He's not bad, not evil, can't help what someone else did to him. It's not even about him anymore, really; this change, this modification is a means to an end, a way to rescue a brother that doesn't deserve the fires of hell, deserves a life, a chance at a dream Dean had snatched away when he dragged Sam back into the hunt.  
  
    “Why isn't he talking?” Bobby demands, curtly, sharp as a knife aimed straight at Cas' jugular.  
  
    “He doesn't want to hurt you.” Cas sits next to Dean, presses their arms together.  
  
    “With his voice?”  
  
    “The power of it is not made for all humans to hear. Celestial beings' true voices are only heard by their brothers or their vessels.”  
  
    “Celestial...” Bobby covers his face with age-telling hands, marks and scars and wrinkles running into spots of discoloration. These are the hands of a hunter, instruments used to hit and shoot and restrain; they're a source of power, strength, and now they're shielding the older hunter's crumpling face, though he really needn't. Both Cas and Dean know, can't help but know so Dean just opens his arms and gathers the now-shaking man's body, encircles it with his own and a push of grace used to soothe, a slither of tranquility. He learns that angels are capable of crying then, as streaks of Bobby's grief mixed with his own frustration dampen his cheeks.  
  
    “Why Dean?” It's mumbled into the man in question's jacket, but it's heard nonetheless. Bobby's arms clutch at him, hard. The heat of the touch, the way Bobby curls his fingers around Dean's skin and wonders why he can't protect anything he loves is high-pitched, urgent, but the grip itself is slightly far away, the pain of a too-tight embrace not even noticed.  
  
    “He's been given a chance to save Sam by my father.” If Bobby gapes, Cas doesn't dwell on it. “He's the only one that can save his brother, and he can't do it if he's human.”  
  
    Bobby raises his head from Dean's chest but doesn't let go, just holds him there for a long moment, just looking into his eyes.  
  
    “A silent Dean?” He asks, the ghost of sarcasm curling his lip. “Now, that's a miracle.” Dean smiles because it's all he can do, rolls his eyes and wants to play-punch the older man but he's not sure of anything anymore, can't gauge what a light tap to him will be to a human.  
  
A human. A streak of lightning in a storm, there and gone, both so fragile and so powerful in ways they don't understand. Dean still feels it, still thinks like nothing's changed, still feels like himself but there's a sort of detached organization, perspective that strains the mess into something understandable. He's straddling a line, a tightrope that he's been thrown onto, told to ignore the sharks below and just go, filled only with blind trust.  
  
    “Bobby,” Cas' hands are on the man's back and he's whispering in his ear, pretending to keep something between the two of them, though he knows Dean can hear his voice, sharp and clear, easy as a crack of thunder in a quiet field. “I'm going to need to take Dean somewhere so he can adjust to this, alright? We'll be back tonight. Can I have your permission to do that?”  
  
    Dean's brow furrows, watching them together, the way Cas somehow knows to give Bobby a sense of power, a hand in something he has nothing to do with. Where was this Cas when Dean first met him, when every sarcastic statement he made fell flat, clanged to the floor as the angel tried to answer, unaware he was being teased or baited or made fun of?   
  
    Cas' lips are still moving, still involved in an exchange with Bobby, but his voice is in Dean's head, a direct line of tinkling piano, a sweet melody disguised as words. _I learned._ Dean still has a physical shape, is his own vessel, really, and so the words Cas lays down is him speaking to and from Dean, from within blood and cells and the electricity that carries it all to his brain, a newly reworked, expanded thing that reacts wildly to the other angel's stimuli. The taste of Cas' mouth floods back over his tongue, remembered, stored for recall, long notes of cherry and plum and something bitter, like a favorite wine he'd never got to drink before today. He swallows it down, wants it to spread, to be in every part of him, brushing against his very grace.  
  
    “Leave, Bobby,” Cas' is deadly now, forgets to play his polite game but it must be for his own good because the hunter's staring at Dean, mouth open, swinging like a pendulum between worry and immobilizing astonishment. He shakes his head, throws off the spell Dean seems to have cast on him and keeps his eyes down, smart enough to avoid being caught again. A few quick steps that demonstrate his still-coiled agility separate him from the angels, and the quick slam of the bedroom door furthers it.  
  
    _Come here_ , Cas requests, eyes  locked on Dean's, and though the rest of his expression is a perfect poker face, there's a sudden burst of admiration in him. Dean rises off the bed, stands next to Cas in front of a chestnut-stained dresser, a beautifully crafted piece of furniture that blooms into a sun at the top, a mirror at the center. He touches the wood lightly, runs his fingers through dust, creating tracks like skiers in the snow. It's a relic of Bobby's wife, something too beautiful to give up but too much of a presence, the ghost of a woman, to put in his own room.  
_  
The mirror, Dean_.  
  
    How do angels get anything done? Cas' gentle prod is like teeth on skin, nips and bites that make him draw in a breath, pleasure and pain unfolding in a full-body tingle. The feel of a mouth against his, the ghost of their kiss rushes back and he just wants, dissolves into the honey-slow pooling of desire that doesn't just gather down low like it used to; no, now it expands, works its way through hands and feet and torso, makes each piece of him want to press hard against another and forget all the rest. But he does as Cas says, cheeks coloring hot knowing his mind isn't a safe haven anymore, that everything he's just felt was  just broadcast in capslock and bold. So he looks into the glass, embarrassment giving way to the surprise of meeting someone who isn't quite a stranger in the reflection he used to know.  
  
    His eyes didn't absorb light when he was human, not even when he cried. Now they're clearer than the best-cleaned emerald, color melding into an almost hunter-green, purifying the spots of white and gold and brown, the same shade that makes Sam's eyes look dark in low light. Life's marks have been erased, the lines around his eyes and lips replaced with supple youth, a sheen of health not usually found in anyone but children. His mouth is a bit redder, a discreet hint of blood-rushed kisses, plumper, like they've swollen to hide a secret. He looks as he did, but his history is gone, the scar on his temple from some forgotten monster's claws smoothed over, the picture of perfection in symmetric lines and roman features. He's gleaming, the first rays of sun as they rise, the color that makes people turn their faces up and forget the business of the day, more interested in soaking up the fleeting light.  
  
   _Let it happen, Dean._  
  
    Cas' urges don't hide his excitement, raining down like colorful fireworks against a starless sky. Dean doesn't have to say what's holding him back, why he's hovering in the middle, neither human nor angel but an unsteady mix of both.  
  
    _This is real, Dean. This is happening._  
  
    He cuts through Dean's hesitation, that this is somehow just a dream, that changing will make it real and the truth and then he'll be stuck with this, this change that just pulls back Sam's blood drinking, turns his insides into a mass of tangled reticence. But it doesn't reach as far as it used to, can't cover his eyes with clammy fingers and stunt his thoughts. He's been given this thing, been remade by God himself and while he can hate the change, its purpose calms him, centers him because it brings him back to what he's used to. This is just another hunt, a trek to save Sam from hell, to take him down from the hooks, flip Lucifer off and get out. This is for Sam.  
_  
Dean._  
  
    The mirror glares, Dean's light shot back at him, though he sees through it. He has evaporated, in a way, grace bled out of his body, forgetting its obligations to gravity and all the other human rules imposed on it. He's a tremulous outline of himself, grace constantly tasting and reacting to the air around him, to Cas' grace. But his eyes stand out, headlights cutting through fog, that same verdigris, emphasized by the almost-blonde haze of hair longer than his human style, almost wavy, like wheat in the wind. But what stops him, what would have him panting, trying to stave off a sudden loss of consciousness had he been alone is the flare of radiance encircling the crown of his head. It's not like Cas, whose is a gold that puts the metal of the same name to shame, a burst of hope and joy Dean had never even suspected the angel could feel before his drastic specie reassignment. His is the color of translucent water of tropical places, a blue-green that is steadiness and loyalty, an unflinching will and strength, the clasp of hands, meshed fingers that promise never to let go.  
  
_Come, Dean._  
  
    There's a picture in Dean's head, a clearing in woods he doesn't know but he imagines himself there, instinctively understands what to do and so his cells separate, allow air to slither through before blinking out of existence. Coming back together as one whole is the heated first stretch after waking, limbs—grace—flexing, straining before coming back to center. He's in the clearing, a wide space with a surrounding row of trees creating shadows and streaks of spotlighting sun that escape the branches gnarled attempts to shut it out. There's barely any noise, a background choir of insects and birds yelling at one another. Dean imagines laying on his back here, staring up at the sky to watch the clouds roll through, staying until nature forgets he doesn't quite belong and he's accepted, takes root with the trees.  
  
    “Beautiful,” he slips, speaking aloud, but Cas' light remains placid, unchanged.  
  
    _You can speak out loud here_ , Cas says his voice in Dean's mind, like a picture remembered, called back to be viewed with open eyes, there and not there at the same time. _No one's around. Don't worry._   But Dean doesn't do it again, instead reaches out with the center of his thoughts, grace following automatically, skimming at Cas' edges.  
  
   _I want to try it this way._  
  
    The ring over Cas' head brightens, pulses. It reminds Dean of a smile.  
  
   _No 'try' to it._ Dean flushes, or lights up in the angelic equivalent and wants to change the subject, but Cas stops him before he can direct his voice toward the angel again.  
_  
You think of nothing that would bring shame upon you. I will never judge your thoughts. Now we can change the subject._ Relief is the relaxation of shoulders that don't quite exist and he wonders for the second time when, exactly, Cas figured out how to deal with humans. Or angels that were very recently human.  
  
    _It makes sense to try to understand the beings we're supposed to love as much as God_ , is his answer. Dean pictures the stiff, uncompromising Cas of what seems like forever ago, the angel he'd corrupted, slowly, the apathetic, follow-the-orders drone.  
  
    _I like you like this_ , he ventures, unsure if Cas will be offended. But the angel just slips closer so their graces crackle against one another.  
  
    _That makes two of us_. But Cas falls serious then, light dimming a bit. _There is a journey ahead of us, Dean. I can only expect it will be the worst thing you've ever had to face._ His sort-of arm circles around Dean, rests between his shoulder blades. _But push that away for now. Allow me to show you something._ The touch moves off to the left, drifting through something new, something Dean hasn't noticed yet. Muscles move in ways they've never before, unleashing a light weight, new limbs that sigh happily to be released, to move in lazy strokes, imitating the direction of the wind. They're not unnatural, not strange, just there. They shake under Cas' touch and time stops around them, forgets everyone else as one angel touches another's wings, drawing moans of pleasure from between gritted teeth, bars that would lock the noise away but can't help it as he's sliced open, bared by pleasure and desire, left completely vulnerable to Cas, who just keeps moving hands over the wings blooming from Dean's back. When he stops, Dean manages to hold his disappointment in but just barely, a whine ready and willing on his lips as he presses them together.  
  
    _Fly with me_ , Cas says, allowing his own wings out, stretching them so Dean can take the sight in, can see what his look like through another. They're more solid than his body, the color and sheen of a pearl. Dean touches, can think of nothing better to do, and feels velvet and down, a surface slick because of its delicate silk texture.  
  
    _Fly with me_ , he hears again, and this time Dean takes Cas' hand.


	6. Chapter 6

  Dean has never liked flying, doesn't trust planes because there are too many moving parts, too many variables for him to feel comfortable. Every takeoff is accompanied by an imagined crash, a whiplash of metal against concrete air, a push down that leaves the plane floundering, tumbling back down to earth until it slams into the ground, a fiery wreck.   
  
    It's a very good thing, then, that this flying is nothing like being trapped in a vacuum of metal and rubber, hurtling through the sky with crossed fingers under the power of humans who can't keep their feet on the ground, aren't satisfied by the limitations of their bodies. This no longer applies to Dean, whose wings are strong though they look to be made of spun glass, a fragility that belies the steel beneath. They flex up and down, lifting him past the canopy of trees until there's nothing around him but free space and the blue eternity of an endless sky. He's not worried about falling, knows, somehow, that he won't, but there's a twinge deep inside, a quick stab of sadness because of what would happen if he were to collide with the hard ground below: nothing. He is impervious now, would remain whole, intact, alive—the idea is one of freedom, something new an profoundly frightening.  His distraction keeps him from noticing where he's going and so he's pushed into a thermal, warm air vaulting him up almost too fast to see straight. He panics as he's separated from Cas, as he rises and drifts into the sky with wings that pay him no mind, that stay still and allow the wind to do all the work.   
  
    _It's ok,_ Cas chuckles in his head, the sweet sound of his amusement enough to halt Dean's worry. Cas is the swelling notes of a piano's ivories, the rich, lower notes that are as powerful as they are potent. He catches up and they glide together, Cas showing off by twirling onto his back, flying stomach-up under Dean, grinning when he earns a glare from the angel-in-training. They stay up there, forgetting the world below, diving and chasing, stroking one another's wings and swooping off to be caught. But the hours of the day catch up and soon blue gives way to red and purple and orange before the beacons of the night come out, guides forgotten long ago but dutiful nonetheless.   
  
    It's when they've landed and Cas is urging Dean to practice speaking that he slips and admits why he'd prefer nothing more than to keep Cas in his head.   
  
  _You sound like music,_ he says.   
      
    _Piano?_ Cas has already heard his thoughts, but his response is a shy sort of gratitude, the higher register of a more playful tone.   
  
    _Yeah._  
  
   _You do as well._ Cas seems to forget his lesson plan, the practice Dean's supposed to be doing. _Cello._ Dean hears the deep melancholy of the wood instrument, the sensuality it carries.   
  
    _It gets inside of you before you notice, finds its way to your core and just holds its echo, resonates until you feel what it wants you to._  
  
    They're quiet after that, sharing the knowing silence of an almost-couple, still wavering though the weight has been stacked and it's just a matter of time until they give in. Dean doesn't care about gender anymore, really, a relaxation of angelic influence he's sure, but now that his mind has expanded he sort of enjoys the fact that the truth, that the point of love is the emotion itself, not those attached to it, would piss off the Bible-toting hate-mongers the world over.   
  
_Why were we created?_ He wonders, thinking of humanity and its wars and ignorance, the genocides and aggression of one type of people trying to prove themselves better than another. _Why did  God keep going after he'd made angels?  
_  
   _I'm not sure. Maybe he wanted to see how they would grow without the powers we've been bestowed, without the certainty of his presence. Who knows?  But I'm glad._  
  
    It's directed toward Dean, that last part. He know it is, burns a little brighter for it and tries to reach out, to align himself with Cas' grace, but he's stopped, cut off.   
  
    _No,_ Cas admonishes. The rejection is swift, shaming him, but Cas just laughs again. _Touch me,_ he says, _but as a human._ It's a test.   
  
    Dean pictures his body, the shape of his legs, the straight line of his waist. His eyes shut to see better, to ignore the distraction of Cas' form. When he opens them after a hard shift, a realignment that leaves him faintly cut off, hearing a little less sharp, he sees his success, the skin and bone of a human body. Cas returns to himself as well, spiriting away to where his vessel lies, under a tree, gone unnoticed by Dean. His light dims as he sinks back in and claims the body, features deepening like a painting flowing from under an invisible brush. When he's staring at Dean with muted but still striking eyes, Dean ambles over easily, allows his hand forward, traces over the scratch of day-old facial hair.   
  
    “Talk to me, Dean.” The deep, rough voice of Cas' human form is back.    
  
    “Hey, Cas,” Dean says, a slow grin forming when he knows he's gotten it right.   
  
                                                                                                       ***  
    Dean is an apt pupil. He learns to dilute himself, to form an uneasy truce with his human form though it feels like a dilution of his his senses, a watered-down version of himself. Bobby pretends to be around him with no problem, but he can still hear the older hunter's thoughts, the spite he holds for heaven at Dean having been picked out as special, a man set apart from the masses. Bobby wants a life for Dean, a family in a house, no more running down demons, credit cards scams and sewing himself back up in motels. Dean just hugs him carefully, having figured out how to tone his strength down, whispers that this is alright, this is ok, he's going to save Sam. And it's _his_ voice, _his_ body that Bobby relaxes into before he grumbles, commands to be let go and walks from the room, swearing lightly under his breath.   
      
    Flying is easy as walking, and within a week Dean feels at home with his new abilities. He knows it's partially a kind of bravado, a fragile, quick adaptation to speed the time until he's ready to save his brother. He knows that each day is an eternity for Sam, an endless string of time for his torturers to get more creative, to find new places to twist their knives and pick out bones, fingers ripping through flesh as they go. He takes off one day, leaves the ground behind in favor of a cloudy, gray sky hoping that the wind will shuck his thoughts away, will wash the image of Sam's broken body, all unnatural angles and pieces, from his irises. Being an angel isn't what he though it would be, isn't the unfeeling facade Cas used to display. Emotions are intensified, felt with his entirety and the frustration that boils in every cell makes him restless, impulsive.   
  
    Cas is waiting for him when he gets back, touches down on dusty earth.   
  
    “This isn't helping.” he lets his grace arc over Dean's chest, the pressure of it dead center on his heart.   
  
    “We're wasting time here,” Dean snaps back, pushing Cas' grace away with his own. “Every day, every _minute_ is more pain for him. How long until he breaks, if he hasn't yet?”   
  
    “Do you want to fail, Dean?” Ire burns cerulean in Cas eyes, and he lets his vessel go, allows it to fall to the ground softly, curled like it's asleep. _If we go before you're ready, he's doomed. Could you forgive yourself?_  
  
    Cas, intentionally or not, knows which buttons to push. A curtain drops between them, a veil that severs their connection, blocking the other angel completely from the comfort of Dean's mind. It's a sobering bucket of cold water, an isolation that is unnatural and chilling, a layer of snow that buries him deeply but he keeps it up, allows it to fill him because he still has that sense of pride, has all the remnants of his mortal coil. He watches as Cas goes back to his vessel, enters it with a flash of light that spurts from its eyes and mouth, eyes that look up at Dean from the ground, cheek indented with the pattern of the rocks underneath.   
  
    He doesn't expect to be disarmed so easily, to look into the hurt Cas can't hide and mirror it. He sinks to his knees and inches forward, ignoring the mild discomfort of the gravel through his jeans.   
  
    “I'm still so human, Cas,” he lifts the other man's chin, cups it so his skin is between Cas' cheek and the ground. “I can't help that it's all I know. I mean—I know how it feels to be an angel, but I still react like I'm the old me.”   
  
    “It's to be expected.” Cas' lashes splay across his cheeks, brush against Dean's thumb, soft and light as a hummingbird hovering in the air. “You can't fully know what it is to be an angel because you weren't created as one. But your reactions as a human will be a weakness in hell—they'll get you through your mind. And I'm sorry for baiting you, but you needed to learn to shield yourself.”   
  
    “You—that was a—” Dean's too impressed to be mad. “Manipulative. How human of you, Cas.”   
  
    “Thanks to you,” he murmurs, shielding his eyes again before looking back up, straight at Dean, through his body, straight to his grace. He sees the confusion on Dean's face, the quick downward twitch of lips. “I've been in your mind, seen your memories, shared your experiences. You've let me in in ways I've never expected—I've lived _through_ you, in a way. And I see now. I understand.”   
  
    “Understand?”   
  
    “It's people like you that explain humanity to me, Dean. I fought with you to stop the apocalypse, but even then I was just trying to keep my brothers from spoiling what our father had created. But now,” his free hand parallel's Dean's, traces the skin of his cheek, “I know. The world was worth saving for you alone, for the bravery and the unwillingness to let your brother damn himself.”   
  
    “Yeah, and that turned out so well,” Dean says through gritted teeth, eyes growing hot, itchy.   
  
    “Angels are born to love, Dean. That's their sole purpose, loving servitude. Humans don't have that obligation, but they honor it anyway. You more than anyone else I've ever seen.”   
  
    Cas starts to say more, but Dean stops him, massages the words off the angel's tongue with his own. The kiss is spiked cider, the tang of spices and the burn of alcohol that lights desire in both men until they're groaning with need, trying to reach into one another deeper, all teeth and scraping nails, rutting hard. Cas is glowing, Dean can see it even through his closed eyes. The angel underneath him is stretching out, ready to leave his vessel behind again.   
  
    “Stay,” Dean growls into his neck, lips parting to allow his tongue to taste, to lick a stripe there, coating taste buds with citrus and the vitality of grace trying to escape skin. _Stay,_ Dean says again, and then gives up his shape, grows lighter than the air around him. Cas knows what he's about to do a second before he acts, tilts his head back and gasps a please, eyes more pupil than iris, lust blown black, opening to take everything Dean can give. Dean obliges, allows himself to fall through the walls of humanity Cas remains in, joins him in the middle, the heart, and wraps himself around the organ like a snake slithering up an arm. He can feel Cas' borrowed body reacting, pants growing uncomfortably tight, grace pulling at him with primitive need for more. He touches with curiosity, each slide of essence enough to make Cas scream his name, enough to send his heart rate into a thunderous tattoo in his chest, a sprint as Dean manipulates himself inside Cas. At first he's so attuned to Cas' pleasure that he doesn't notice his own trembling, the shaky waves that shudder through his own grace, crashing over him as he expands, fills limbs so he can touch every part, feel every atom.   
  
    Cas' body reacts first, sex twitching madly before release, and then his essence follows, pulling Dean along with it. It isn't like a human orgasm where everything but pleasure is forgotten. No, this is stronger, more aware, a thunderclap that sends them spiraling outward, touching everything and nothing at once, elation building before it snaps back, ringing through him until he goes blind with it, loses himself in the landslide of it. Dean reforms slowly, entangled with (in) Cas.   
  
    “I—I, that—” He stutters when he regains the ability to speak.   
  
    “I know,” Cas says. “I know.”   
  
                                                                                                        ***  
      
    When the time comes, weak light of an overcast day blinking half-heartedly at the earth, Dean is scared. He's more than scared. He knows he has to do this, knows he will, but the thought of going back, of witnessing the horror that had haunted him every day after his own escape makes his grace shrink inside him, curl into a protective ball deep inside himself.   
  
    “It will be alright.” Cas' hands are on his, eyes boring into green counterparts. “I will be next to you, with you the entire time.”   
  
    He nods tersely, rubs his thumb in circles on the back of Cas' hand. “Let's get it over with.”   
  
    They fall together, ground rushing up then over, swallowing them down into depths that reach forever, a free fall that allows dread to build as they go, foreshadowing what's to come. The landing is hard, cracking the grey rocks  underneath them. The color is endless, a bleak haze of nothingness, a lack that flows in from every corner. Hell is no hope, the certainty of evil, the kind that sneaks in, fills until it transforms humans into demons, twists everything good until it's gone, injecting greasy hate and malignancy in its stead.  Moans ring out on all sides, cries of those being dissected punctuated with the fleshy, wet sound of blood and organs being handled, explored. Dean stumbles as he stands, is caught with a steady grip, one that brings him back to himself, allows him to throw up the barriers of his mind so he can look on, so the memories of his experiences here can't crawl back from the murky depths where they've been buried.   
  
    _Dean,_ Cas prods, voice urgent. He stands up straight, looks ahead, where Cas' gaze is fixed. Standing in front of him is Sam, dressed in the white suit he'd been in the day Dean had jumped forward in time, had confronted him. Sam sees him looking, sizing him up.   
  
    “Hey, Dean,” he says, showing his teeth, a threat, not a smile. “Missed you.”


	7. Chapter 7

Cas' hand is in Dean's, his voice a moment later, a calming stroke to his grace, a brush of encouragement.   
  
    _That isn't Sam. That's not your brother.  
  
    I know. He's just being worn, right? So he can see, can hear—  
  
    No. This is an illusion. We're in Lucifer's world, Dean. We're playing by his rules. _  
  
    Dean works to keep his face neutral, to keep from giving Lucifer any ins, a weakness in his already chipped armor. But the surroundings try to break him down, each sight touching upon memories of his own time here. The constant soundtrack of screams, the despair and fury and oh help please someone anyone are all reactions he's carved out on his own time, fingers deep in his victims, warmed by their blood, their still-beating hearts. But he can't think like this, can't fight what's already happened, has to focus on what he's here for, on Sam. Lucifer imitates him poorly, holds his expression in a high arrogance that creases his forehead, draws his lips up, showing blunt teeth.   
  
    “What's wrong?” Lucifer purrs, taking a step forward, eyes clinging to Dean's form. “You won't say hello to your brother?”   
  
    Responding would be playing into Lucifer's game, so Dean remains quiet, eyes tracking the fallen angel as he paces back and forth, the image of Sam's slouch, hands tucked in pockets, but where his brother tried to make himself smaller, Lucifer is all pride and strut, calling attention to himself in the details, the grace with which he walks, the ethereal light that that shines brightly, even through the mask of Sam's face.   
  
    “Fine,” Lucifer shrugs, rolling his shoulders, blurring, shrinking before revealing himself, the human form he'd made for himself. The jaw is square, could be carved from marble. His eyes are a light grey, so different than Cas' expressive blue—they're steel, a river of power and strength that's been corrupted, left to rot. Dean looks into them, though they turn his spine to ice, cold fingers working down, filling him with dread. It just makes him glare harder, throw up the shields Cas had provoked him into forming. The devil's hair is dark, a chestnut brown that waves gently, has a gloss most models would kill for. “What do you think?” He grins at Dean, twirling slowly. Another step forward, another sly smile.   
  
    “You're beautiful,” Dean says, telling the truth. Lucifer shoots a look at Cas, something like triumph, but Dean cuts his victory short. “It's too bad you rot the humans you touch. But hey, the truth always comes out, right? No matter how good you look,” It's Dean's turn to sneer now, to show his own disgust, “All you are is a disease.”   
  
    The devil smiles, but Dean sees the truth, the fury behind upturned lips and eyes that crinkle with false mirth.   
  
    “Seems like they'll give anyone wings these days,” he murmurs, biting his lip. “How did you do it, Castiel? A spell—or did you give him some of your pitiful grace?” Castiel stares at his brother for a moment, eyes soft and shining, sadness glittering in the depths of blue.   
  
    “Lucifer,” he says, hands out, welcoming, though he keeps his grace tucked in tight, ready for an attack. “Give this up. You've lost. Forget Earth and forgive our Father.”   
  
    “How sweet,” Lucifer drawls, looking at Cas with the gaze he'd lay upon an insect. “You must be a young one, huh? So naïve. God doesn't care about us, Castiel.” He twists Cas' name, growling the last syllable out. He strikes out with his own dark grace, a darkness based in pain, the satisfaction found in others' suffering. But Dean reacts quickly, throws his own grace in front of Cas, strikes offensively before his mate can be hurt. Surprise perches on Lucifer's features for a moment, but then it's gone, ironed away,  back into that malignant smile.   
  
    “He doesn't care?” Dean spits, knowing Lucifer's been caught off guard. “This isn't a spell or borrowed grace, Luci. This is your Daddy's handiwork. I'm full-fledged. And he's back.”   
  
    Lucifer doesn't bother to hold in his anger this time.“You forget, Winchester,” he hisses, closing the space between them, fingers closing around Dean's throat. “This is my world. Here, I'm king. And God won't save you this time.” He lets go, brushes his hands over Dean's chest. “Go ahead, Winchester. Try to find him. See if he even wants to leave.”   
  
    And then Lucifer's gone, melted away, though Dean doesn't trust that they're not being watched, that all eyes are on he and Cas, who pulls him into an embrace tight enough to crack ribs.   
  
  _What, Cas?_ He asks, grace arcing out, plunging through Cas' chest, a tendril of light connecting them both. He gapes at it, has never done it before. He feels Cas' heart in his fingertips, tastes the breathless surprise of the other angel.   
  
    _You shielded me,_ Cas responds, hand reaching up to play through Dean's grace, eyes widening as vine-like ropes wrap around his fingers. His words aren't laced with surprise, but maybe something akin to awe.   
  
    _Instinct,_ he returns, though he knows there's more too it, knows it's bigger and more important than he's letting on. But he's not going to say it while they're in hell, not going to confess to the strange emotion that's settled in him like it belongs there because it would be hollow, the result of a 'we might die here' mentality. Cas just nods.   
  
    _Pull your grace in,_ he says, though it's regretful. _We don't want to stand out any more than we already do._

                                                                                                        ***  
  
    Hell, Dean learns, isn't organized. He was kept in a cell of sorts, after he'd given in, stone walls for comfort, hard and cold, the kind that sucks all feeling away, except misery. He guesses, now, that he'd never been taken outside a block radius—torturing souls right outside his front door. But now they walk down a path of mock-trees, limbs decorated with hanged bodies, souls strangling slowly, calling out with clenched voices like fingernails on a chalkboard. Dean looks straight, can't meet eyes with anyone. He can't save them, can only rescue one today, and that will be his brother. He follows Cas, stopping when the angel pauses, angling his head like he's listening hard for something just out of range.   
      
_Wrap your arms around me_ , Cas says, and Dean barely has time to do so before they're falling again, landing softly this time, on the bank of a river. But a second look reveals a more predictable sinister nature; the river's water is blood, fed by bodies strewn to the sides, long gashes up and down their naked bodies. The blood is dark, the almost-black shade of wounds that run deep, draining the body dry. No one screams here. Instead they gasp, half-formed words carried away before they can finish, last thoughts and pleas meaningless—they'll just heal and start again. Dean's eyes flood without his permission, his humanity rearing its head, clenching his throat. The heat floods down his face, tears replaced as quickly as they fall. He's never been this emotional, never been this open, it doesn't make sense—  
  
    _But it does_. Cas lays a hand on his back, allows the sorrow Dean drowns in to flood through him, too. Empathy, he says, an almost-chide. _Even when you were human, you had it._   Dean wipes at his eyes, laughs, though it comes out as a cough and grasps Cas' hand again.   
  
    _Let's go._ With one last look at the writhing masses beneath him, Dean turns, take Cas with him.   
  
    _That's it_ , Cas spins around to face Dean.   
  
  _What?_  
  
    _I can't guide us, Dean.  
  
    Why?   
  
    It's your link to your brother that will lead us to him. We have to find him through you. Close your eyes. Picture him. You'll know what to do.    
_  
    Dean's eyes flutter shut; he tries to block out the noise around him, the crush of the atmosphere that makes him feel as if he's being compressed, squeezing the light from him inch by inch. He sees Sammy's face, laughing, glaring at him, thoughtful in the passenger's seat of the Impala. He's moving now, can feel wind on his face—it's not a fall but a controlled path, one his mind sets and carries out. When it stops, when he opens his eyes and sees nothing, a haze of grayish light that offers no scenery, no markers of any kind. But he feels it, knows his brother is close by, the ties of DNA that no longer apply reacting to a like specimen. He's alone, though, surrounded by blank, with Cas nowhere to be found.   
      
    “Dean,” it's soft, barely said aloud, comes from just behind him. He turns, and then Sam is in his arms, or he's in Sam's, because it's sort of hard to hold a 6'4'' person, even if he is an angel now.   
  
    “Sammy,” he says, remembering in time to muffle his real voice, to keep it within human parameters. “Oh, God, Sammy. I found you. I found you.” It's then, with the vaguely sulfuric smell of Sam's hair in his nose, that a curved blade, the kind he'd seen in documentaries with people harvesting sugar cane, finds its way to his chest. It shouldn't hurt him, shouldn't even phase him but as he falls to his knees, spots working their way past his sight to blot the face of his brother out, he sees the sigils carved into the handle.   
  
    “Sam,” he gasps, falling forward. The last thing he sees is the smile on his brother's face.   
  
                                                                                                       *  
  
    When sight bleeds back, bringing with it the clouded picture of a throne of sorts, Dean has to keep himself from screaming until his vocal chords tear. He's bound, hands shackled to a wall he leans on, barely able to hold himself up. His wrists burn, the flesh protesting the manacles that, when he looks closer, sees they carry the same sort of sigils, language he doesn't remember learning but now, somehow, knows for certain are a sort of binding power, a stripping force that leaves him weak, unprotected.   
  
    “Like 'em?” Sam calls, walking through a door Dean hadn't seen. He brushes his hair back, walks his fingers over the high back of the chair, allowing Dean to see the length of silver in his hand—a smaller blade, one he twirls easily between long fingers.   
  
    “Sam,” Dean rasps, voice stripped, barely more than a hiss. “It's me, what are you doing?”   
      
    “Is it, Dean?” Sam's voice is bored, as if he's holding back a yawn. “I mean, on the outside, yes. But who's riding you? Who's tucked inside, waiting for me to cut them out?” He brandishes the knife under dean's nose, draws it back, glancing at it thoughtfully before shoving it straight into Dean's side, twisting it as the blade slides through. Dean can't speak, can't breathe as air leaves him forcefully, reducing his cry for Sam to stop into a pitiful mewl.   
  
    “You're killing me, Sammy!” Dean can feel the truth of his words as blood trickles from the wound in his side, hot and thick, the very essence of himself running down his body, soaking through his clothes to pool on the ground under him.   
  
    “Then Dean will go to heaven,” Sam says, eyes shards of ice as they bore into his, “Where he belongs.” The stiffness in Sam's voice is a clue, is important, Dean knows, but he's starting to slide away, drift into unconsciousness, easy as relaxing into a warm bath. He's pulled back with a light, quick cut, one that barely nicks his third layer of skin. Sam's mouth, as he draws back, is tight, an angry little scowl the thins his lips, turning them into pink gashes against his the pallor of his face. Anger. Self-hatred.   
  
_Punishment._  
  
    Lucifer isn't holding his brother captive—Sam is. He's chained down in hell by his own mind, a form of punishment he's so sure he deserves that it's turned everyone into an enemy, even himself. Dean's heart ruptures inside of him, ringing with the failure of his years with Sam, the fact that he couldn't make his brother feel loved, that his own blood has been driven into a self-imposed exile in a place he, least of all, deserved to stay in. Sam must see the emotion in Dean's eyes, must like it because he reaches out, caresses Dean's cheek before laying a sharp slap there, one that leaves a hand print of his own blood.   
  
    “That scar on your chin is from when you were ten and you flipped over the handlebars of your bike,” Dean slurs, vision blurring in and out. “I sewed it up for you and we told Dad you'd gotten into a fight.” Pads of pressure touch down on Dean's throat, perch lightly there for a moment before pressing down, rolling over his esophagus, choking his voice back. Dean changes tactics, unsure if it will work but he's down to his last breaths, dying at the hands of his brother. Cain and Abel.    
  
    _I dinged Dad's truck and you helped me cover it, paint over the scratch. My first kiss was in the Impala, that Amy girl from Canton who made the car smell like strawberry lip gloss for a week. The first time we got into a fist fight was when you told me you wanted to leave. You let me win. You always let me win because I was your big brother, even though I was shitty at it, couldn't protect you when it counted. I—when Mom died I held you in my arms and looked into your eyes and you wrapped your fist around my fingers. I—when—_  
  
    Dean's starting to lose the thread of his thoughts; they unravel as he chases them, scooting farther away as he digs deeper. All he has left is what he feels, so he lets it flood through him, tries to project it to Sam, who's just a blur in front of him now. Regret comes first, an apology for taking Sam away from his normal life, for bringing him back to what would amount to fear and pain and addiction for the only other person he cared about besides their father. Then guilt, the weight of Sam's world on his shoulders, the start of the apocalypse, the torture he went through and inflicted. What's left is love, wide as an ocean, a forgiveness that's endless because they're brothers and they don't give up on one another and fuck, Sam, snap out of it because you don't _belong_ here, you belong in the sun, light on your face, wind lapping at your clothes. Dean's too far gone to see the light that's starting to build, a luminescence that starts under the skin before making its way through his eyes, out of the tips of his fingers. Sam's hand is still on his throat but the grip is loose, the light touch of a butterfly held aloft in the air.   
  
    Love is on his lips, pours out of his skin as he goes under, as he burns brighter than the sun before going out completely.


	8. Chapter 8

Dean is not alone. It's the first thing he knows when a flicker of consciousness streaks through him, trying to edge in around exhaustion so deep each second that passes is a siren's song, a call to slide back under the warm waters of nothingness. But he can't. Not when something's calling to him, pleading with him to _just stay, come back, Dean. Come back to me._ The voice is like laying on his back on a summer night after the heat shimmer has burned from the sky, watching the stars come out as the temperature drops, giving skin a taste of wind. The terror in the words, though—that's what keeps him from slipping back under, ignoring the plea of his invisible companion. It skitters through him, deep-seated panic of loss and mourning. But mourning is for the dead, and he isn't there yet. He thinks.

Something's touching him, a delicate, careful touch smoother than a flower's petal. It grasps at his insides, _electrifies_ him in a way he doesn't quite understand, but as the energy gets stronger, as it weaves in and out around him he begins to gather himself, to form a cohesive whole. _Please Please Please,_ the presence chants, lighting up a little brighter with each repetition, verging on desperation when Dean doesn't respond. But how can he? The raw urgency of it is a paralytic in that it implies a tie, a connection stronger than anything he's ever experienced before. His eyes remain shut, unable, unwilling to open, but the darkness he finds himself in isn't so empty anymore, is pierced by a blue glow, what looks like a ball of energy that busies itself by wrapping around him until darkness fades away and an imitation of the sky ( _or really,_ he thinks, _how the sky_ should _look)_ is left behind.

Or... _God,_ he feels like he's wading through quicksand, unable to think, to piece together _why_ this voice is so familiar. He's overcome by molten _will,_ the heat of refusal, denial. It's not going to give up on him, not until he comes around, even if the presence's life is lost in the fight. Already it's starting to wane, to gasp for help that isn't coming. Dean doesn't know how he understands this all, how he's feeling things that aren't coming from him, things that humans can't possibly do.

_Humans._

As Dean turns the word over, wondering why it only feels half-right, gravity seems to dissipate, as does the heaviness in his mind. He's moving, being pulled somewhere, moved by a force beyond his measure. But as speed builds, as he rushes ever faster to wherever he's being guided, the other in his mind slips away like intertwined hands slipping free, holding on to the last moment, sliding fingertips together, a kiss of skin on skin before it's gone and he's alone.

_Never alone, Dean._

Apparently not. But this voice, this new _thing_ with him overwhelms on a completely different level than the first; it echoes with the power of the wind, the strength of the sea. It feels old, like the pages of books when they were hand-printed. It's familiar, but completely unknowable, somehow.

_Open your eyes, Dean._

He does. He can. And it's to a familiar scene, eyes gazing down past his dangling legs to water below, the surf a melody in the background. It cuts out quickly, though, the man next to him, a neat-enough looking guy with long hair and sad eyes puts two fingers to his forehead, sighing as he pulls back. And just like that, Dean Winchester is back. Through two digits, his experiences, his losses and loves, strife and triumphs return, in a blur and all at once. They settle, though, arranging themselves neatly, quietly. Their affect isn't quite so mild, though. Dean sees Sam, feels the knife he wielded and how it sliced through him easily, without thought, without regret. The scrape of it inside, the way it brushed bone after slitting flesh, opening veins leaves him gasping, sucking in air that doesn't really exist. Not here. But it's not his brother's name that passes over his lips when the will to speak overrides the horror blocking his vocal chords.

“Cas,” he gasps, thinking only of angel's burn, how he poured his light, burning bright like a comet through space into Dean without hesitation or thought of himself, how it had begun to diminish and he had been _apathetic_ to it all, wondering if he'd be allowed rest again. “No,” he says, shaking his head. “No. Cas can't die. Not for me.”

“Cas,” God says, voice as gentle as arms holding a child, “Is fine. As is Sam, thanks to you.”

“But—how? He killed me. I couldn't break him out of the guilt; he was all twisted up in it.” Even as he admits what Sam did, Dean can't find blame. Sam was painted into a corner, mind lost in hell's cage, Lucifer's playground. “I couldn't save him.”

“But you did, Dean.” God touches his hand, a dizzy, surreal moment. He squeezes Dean's fingers, keeps it there as he continues. “You redefined him as the man he was, the man he's _supposed_ to be. Lucifer stole all that, left bare details, but you put them back, washed him with all you feel for him.”

“So he's—he's alright?” Hope wriggles through him, pricks at the back of his neck. He squashes it, doesn't want to give it any room to breathe.

“He is deeply troubled, Dean. But forgiveness goes a long way. And he's no longer tainted with the darkness of demon blood.”

“ _You_ forgive him?” Dean's not dealing in vague assurances, wants the answers spelled out, plain.

“Yes, Dean. Like I said, we all make mistakes.” God smiles that crooked smile and Dean wants to sob in relief, but he holds himself still, together.

“Haven't you realized it yet, Dean?” God's touching his face now, cupping his cheek, laying him bare with a single glance into his eyes. “You're not made to hold yourself up all the time. No human is.”

“Human,” Dean whispers. “Am I human again?” He didn't notice it before, but colors are muted, dulled down to basic. He can't _feel_ God as he did the first time, though some part of him senses the deity's grandeur though it blocks out the rest, protecting his body from things it can't process.

“Well,” God inches closer, looking beyond Dean's exterior, focusing on something he can't see anymore. “That's a decision you're going to have to make.”

“Come again?” It comes out more sarcastic than he means, but he's in some sort of purgatory and God is still touching his face and it's a bit more than he can handle. He has limits, and they were left behind before he even woke up.

“I can put you back as a human, Dean. Or I can return you to Earth as the being you've become.”

Dean's lips move, but nothing comes. Why would he remain an angel? Why truly abandon his humanity?

The answer comes in the form of a face, in blue eyes and dark, mussed hair and lips that are dry but never chapped. Dean _knows_ Cas, shares something deeper than can be put into words. But if he chooses Cas, he will not age. He will watch Sam grow old, weak, will see experiences he can't ever have. He will be different, other.

“So?” God asks, knowing he needs to be prompted. His answer is silent, though God needs no words to know what he's chosen.

“So be it,” the deity murmurs before laying his lips on Dean's forehead. “Goodbye, Dean.”

 

***

Dean opens his eyes to a face that is learning, has begun to reflect more than the strong emotions, anger and confusion, or the lack thereof, a blank canvas of unused features. Now it expresses a myriad, a patchwork amalgam, eyebrows drawn in joy and sadness, mouth stretched into a smile that's pressed tight, trying to hold back. Cas' eyes shine, reflecting like a diamond as he cries his first tears, wetness that slips down his face to land on Dean's. He traces their warmth with his fingers, slips the digits into his mouth, tastes the angel.

“Hey, Cas.”

It's all he gets to say before his mouth is covered, explored with a hunger that isn't searching for release but relief, assurance that everything is alright, that he's ok. That this is happening.

 _I'm here,_ Dean says, grace falling back to make room for Cas' as it pushes through him, spiraling and twisting until one can't be told from another. When Dean starts to allow his body to slip away, though, Cas stops him.

 _Stay,_ He's told. He doesn't need it to be said again. Cas sighs through him, casting away the hurt, hell's residue. He filters through Dean's blood, his organs, his heart and mind until he's touching everything, every part of Dean that moves and lives.

 _I don't know what happened._ Cas' guilt turns Dean's stomach, forms a rock there that feels heavier than Atlas' load. _I was with you, then I wasn't. And I couldn't find you, couldn't go back._

 _You almost killed yourself trying to save me, Cas._ Dean emanates calm, soothes the raw edges of Cas' grace, the pieces that shudder with inadequacy, left-over helplessness. _You have nothing to regret, nothing to feel guilt for. I love you._ The words are unplanned, tumble out naturally. But it's _right_ now, is true and though he feels a twinge inside, human fear of rejection, a shadow of shame for admitting something so important, he knows Cas won't hurt him.

 _Love you,_ Cas replies, flaring bright, a pulse that shocks its way through Dean, pleasure tailing it, screaming in his blood. Cas says it again and again until Dean's world falls away, until he can't keep himself corporeal. When he comes down, Cas is wrapped around him. He knows he's home.

***

 

Sam can see Dean's other form, can witness his light without the threat of blindness. He doesn't know why he's so sure about it, doesn't understand the certainty but he trusts it, visits his brother for the first time as the being he's evolved into, the same Dean, just truer.

 _Hey, Sammy,_ He says to a man who seems so small, somehow, a man holding himself in, afraid of touching anything, of contaminating the outside world with his touch. Dean aches as he reads it, clear as day, Sam's mind practically shouting the thought. It's worse looking at him, seeing the shreds of Sam's soul twisting inside of him, jagged scraps of his former self. The pieces are all there but have been shattered, broken into a million of pieces, separate points that keep him from moving forward. He can't put himself back together. Sam doesn't look at him but Dean sees the fragility in his eyes, the leaden weight of guilt. Dean can't break Sam's catatonia with words, that much is obvious. So he does what he can now, uses the gifts given to him. His brother's body jerks, squirms as Dean curls around it, skimming over the skin before he takes the shards of Sam's soul into himself. He lets his conversations with God replay, allows the love he felt in His presence to filter through to Sam. And then he does what he did in hell, goes through his own life, shows Sam who he is.

The progress is slow, drenched with all the negative emotions Sam can throw at Dean, who fights back with forgiveness, with comfort. _I need you, Sam,_ he says, delving into a heart that beats heavy. He shows Sam the last thing he'd screamed in hell, the image of a baby staring up at him, gripping him tight, anchoring him. _Please. Let it go. Give it up. You don't deserve it._

It's the memory of Sam dying in Dean's arms that finally breaks something in his brother. Seeing Dean lose himself to grief, go crazy with it loosens a sob in Sam, a fissure Dean opens himself to, taking in all Sam can give.

 _I'm sorry Dean so sorry God don't deserve this—_ Sam rambles, shaking inside Dean's grace.

 _I was sent to save you, Sammy. You were rescued_ because _you deserve this._ And then Dean stops talking, stops thinking, allows himself to envelop Sam, to hold him like a child because their father never did. He sees the shadow that hangs over Sam and burns brighter for it, competes with the sun's luminescence because this is his brother and he's fought too hard to let go now. An echo of light stirs in Dean, a copy-cat brightness that collects Sam's soul, catches it and pastes it back together, acting as a bandage, a bond of love and trust and all the unspoken things they don't have to say anymore.

Sam loses consciousness after that, and though Dean isn't far behind him, he can't help but feel happy, truly happy.

***

Things aren't perfect. Sam moves like the walking wounded, as if at any moment the ground below will open up to drag him back to hell. Dean still walks the strange line of a changed hunter, though he can't find regret when Cas looks at him, when they lose themselves in the sky, when their graces mingle and cling together.

Years pass. Dean watches Sam's soul, always hesitant, grow. He goes back to school, stays for years and ends up with a dissertation in anthropology. He doesn't have children because his wife, Amelia, is unable, but there's something right in the way their bloodline ends, the closure of a circle of betrayal.

Amelia's dark hair grows gray; her eyes dull. And so do Sam's. She slips away one winter morning while he makes her tea. Her warmth fades as its does. When Sam's time comes, when his fingers are gnarled and his bones are arthritic, it's Dean who takes him, who cradles his patched soul and flits to heaven with Cas as his guide.

**Author's Note:**

> *The major character death that takes place is of eventual natural causes.


End file.
